Using Dragon Medical Practice Edition Outside of the Clinic

Using Dragon Medical Outside of the Office

Many healthcare providers prefer (or need) to document their patient encounters outside of the office/clinic environment. Whether they’re catching up on patient charts or working remotely, clinicians regularly ask us about installing Dragon on their laptops, dictating with their smartphones, routing files to transcriptionists, and more.

To address those needs, we decided to produce a guide to using Dragon Medical outside of the office. In this article, we’ll cover the most common options healthcare providers have when it comes to integrating Dragon speech-to-text into their remote, after-hours, and locum tenens documentation scenarios.

Technical Environment

The version and edition of Dragon that we’ll be referring to in this article is Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2. When working with this application, you will always need a computer—whether that’s a laptop or desktop—to install it on. There is no current Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 application available for the smartphone. Rather, some of the tips we will be providing refer to third party applications and/or hardware.

Working From a Laptop

Many providers want to know if they can install Dragon Medical on both a work computer and a home laptop.

Yes, you can install Dragon Medical Practice Edition on up to four computers.

If you get beyond four computers, uninstall Dragon from one to free up another install, or consult with your Dragon reseller. They may be able to get you more activations from Nuance directly.

Aside from portability, there’s not a great deal of physical difference between using Dragon dictation on a laptop and a desktop. You will have fewer USB ports, which may mean you need to unplug something to plug in your speech recognition microphone. That’s about it.

Where the real difference comes in is in performance, access, and connectivity.

Laptop Performance

You will want to check your laptop’s system specs, to see if they differ from your clinic workstation. If your laptop has less computing power, you’ll probably notice it when using Dragon Medical. If you want to improve this performance, consult with your IT department.

EHR Access

If you dictate directly into an EHR at the office, there’s a decent possibility that you won’t be able to at home. Because of the various layers involved in accessing EHRs, it’s likely that you will need to use the Dictation Box in Hidden mode to make your notes. This is definitely a workable solution, and we regularly train clinicians on how to do this successfully.

That being said, let’s look at some scenarios where you should be able to dictate directly into your EHR with Dragon.

Locally Installed

If your electronic health record software is installed locally on your laptop, along with Dragon Medical speech recognition, you should be able to dictate directly into your patient charts.

Caveat: If your EHR does not support Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 natively, you will still need to utilize the Dictation Box.

Web-Based

If your EHR is published to the World Wide Web, and can be accessed publicly, you should be able to use Dragon Medical voice recognition directly in the application. You will need to ensure that the web browser has the Dragon plug-in installed/enabled for full compatibility.

Again, the same caveat applies: EHRs that don’t natively support Dragon Medical require the Dictation Box.

Local Applications

Maybe you aren’t even making patient notes in an EMR. You might have a Microsoft Word template that you dictate into, or some other word processing software. Check the Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 Administrator Guide for supported applications.

EHR Connectivity

Your EHR may be installed on your work computer, hosted on an application server, or delivered in some other method than locally. It’s very possible that you will need to remote into your main workstation, VPN into your network, or connect to your EHR through multiple virtualization layers.

In each of these cases, when using Dragon speech recognition on your laptop, you will need the Dictation Box. You may also have to perform additional setup/configuration. Please note, there is no guarantee that Dragon Medical Practice Edition will work in every deployment. Refer to the administrator’s guide linked above for more details.

What About Tablets?

So long as the tablet meets Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 specifications and runs a supported version of the Windows operating system, you should be able to install and use voice recognition.

This disqualifies iPads and Android tablets.

Need Dragon Medical Support?

Let one of our technicians help you design and configure your Dragon dictation setup, so that you can make patient notes wherever you need to.

Using a Voice Recorder

If you don’t have a laptop or tablet that you can use with Dragon, or if you don’t want to carry your laptop around, you still have options. A digital voice recorder will enable you to dictate patient notes while you’re away from your computer. After the dictation is finished, you can send it through Dragon directly—or through background voice recognition using 3rd party software.

You’ll also need to consider how you get those dictations from the recorder to a computer with Dragon installed, whether that’s your clinic workstation or your home laptop. Let’s look at some of the possible scenarios.

Connecting the Recorder Directly

One of the simplest ways to get your dictations onto a computer is to plug it in (or dock it). Some of these recorders come with software that will download the dictations from your device to the computer automatically. If that’s not an option, you can always manually transfer the recordings.

Transcription With Dragon

Once the dictations are on the right computer, Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2 has a transcription function that can be accessed right on the DragonBar (Tools > Transcribe Recording). Alternatively, you can use the AutoTranscribe Folder Agent, which is located in the same menu area.

Smartphone Dictation Apps

Philips and Olympus both provide dictation apps for iOS and Android. These are subscription services that allow you to dictate and email files to your Dragon workstation. From there, the process of speech recognition is the same for files downloaded from a digital voice recorder.

These smartphone apps are officially called:

Philips Dictation Recorder App

Olympus Dictation App

Nuance has a speech-to-text app, Dragon Anywhere, that will actually transcribe your voice right on the phone. You can then email that document or share it over Evernote, Dropbox, etc. Like the Philips and Olympus apps, this is also a subscription service.

*Dragon Anywhere is not currently targeted for healthcare uses, as it does not have medical terminology in its vocabulary. Be aware that for many providers, this may not be an adequate solution.

Get Dragon Training, Configuration, and Support

Schedule an appointment with one of our technicians today!

Here at Certified eSupport, we’d love to help you set up a dictation workflow for making patient notes outside of the office. We can install and configure Dragon for you, set up your Philips or Olympus software, and even train you on how to put it all together.

Certified eSupport, Corp. is an organization made up of talented engineers, certified trainers, and network administrators. We focus on speech recognition, dictation, and transcription—including software and hardware, in standalone and enterprise implementations. We hold MCSE, MCP, A+, Network+, Healthcare IT Technician, WestLaw Next, and Master HIPAA certifications, and we specialize in healthcare, legal, and corporate solutions.